Abstract
BackgroundAgrocybe aegerita is an agaricomycete fungus with typical mushroom features, which is commercially cultivated for its culinary use. In nature, it is a saprotrophic or facultative pathogenic fungus causing a white-rot of hardwood in forests of warm and mild climate. The ease of cultivation and fructification on solidified media as well as its archetypal mushroom fruit body morphology render A. aegerita a well-suited model for investigating mushroom developmental biology.ResultsHere, the genome of the species is reported and analysed with respect to carbohydrate active genes and genes known to play a role during fruit body formation. In terms of fruit body development, our analyses revealed a conserved repertoire of fruiting-related genes, which corresponds well to the archetypal fruit body morphology of this mushroom. For some genes involved in fruit body formation, paralogisation was observed, but not all fruit body maturation-associated genes known from other agaricomycetes seem to be conserved in the genome sequence of A. aegerita. In terms of lytic enzymes, our analyses suggest a versatile arsenal of biopolymer-degrading enzymes that likely account for the flexible life style of this species. Regarding the amount of genes encoding CAZymes relevant for lignin degradation, A. aegerita shows more similarity to white-rot fungi than to litter decomposers, including 18 genes coding for unspecific peroxygenases and three dye-decolourising peroxidase genes expanding its lignocellulolytic machinery.ConclusionsThe genome resource will be useful for developing strategies towards genetic manipulation of A. aegerita, which will subsequently allow functional genetics approaches to elucidate fundamentals of fruiting and vegetative growth including lignocellulolysis.
Highlights
Agrocybe aegerita is an agaricomycete fungus with typical mushroom features, which is commercially cultivated for its culinary use
RNA was isolated and pooled from three developmental stages of A. aegerita AAE-3: from fruit bodies, vegetative mycelium grown on 2% malt extract agar plates, and vegetative mycelium derived from liquid YMG cultures as mentioned above
The preliminary reference-based assembly of the genome sequence of only the dikaryon A. aegerita AAE-3 consisted of 127 scaffolds covering 44,852,333 bp of the genome
Summary
Agrocybe aegerita is an agaricomycete fungus with typical mushroom features, which is commercially cultivated for its culinary use In nature, it is a saprotrophic or facultative pathogenic fungus causing a white-rot of hardwood in forests of warm and mild climate. Causing a white-rot, A. aegerita is a woodinhabiting agaric primarily degrading dead wood of deciduous trees, especially poplar and willow [2,3,4]. It has been described as a pathogen in declining individuals of these species, as well as in some other tree species including elm, maple and oak [4]. Monokaryons offer advantages for the analysis of genes involved in fruit body formation, but monokaryotic fruiter strains are of potential interest for edible mushroom production, as they usually produce only low amounts of spores, a desired trait in mushroom farming [27, 29, 30]
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